‘Alien: Covenant’ Sequel To Film Next Year, Ridley Scott Mocks Plans for Another Ripley Movie

Last week, the director of the middling science fiction horror film Alien: Covenant took time out of his busy schedule to establish to all who would listen that there’s no way the planned sequel, starring none other than the original Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver herself, will ever see the light of day.

While at one point, Fox was adamant that Blomkamp’s sequel film would be made, Scott has now yet again claimed that it’s never going to see the light of day. This time, Scott even twisted the knife a bit, arguing that the film was a stupid idea to begin with:

“They wanted to do Alien, er, Awakening – Neill Blomkamp. I said fine. I was going to be the producer. If I could have, I would have. Except I do question – why have both [Blomkamp’s Alien and Scott’s Alien] out there? It seems like shooting your big toe off – it doesn’t make sense.

“But they didn’t go forward with it, Fox, so I just kind of kept out of it. I mean, I’d literally ignited this thing to bring it off the ground again, because it was lying there dormant on a shelf. I had this thing to bring it back up – but here we are.”

These statements, made in a recent interview with IGN UK, suggest that, as far as Ridley Scott is concerned, having more Alien movies is a bad thing.

Someone call Marvel, they’ve been doing it wrong. You don’t want your franchise to constantly produce movies, instead it’s better to release a single, poorly reviewed film from one aging director every three years.

It’s hard to take Scott’s rather self-aggrandizing claims about the Alien franchise seriously – not least because his latest prequel film, Alien: Covenant, has received a somewhat unenthusiastic response from critics that’s about on par with the horrendous Prometheus from a few years ago.

In spite of this, though, Scott has convinced someone at Twentieth Century Fox to let him continue making these movies, and another one will start filming next year – whether you like it or not.

According to Scott, “we’re writing [a sequel] now, as we speak. I’ll be filming that within 14 months.”

Oh joy.

It’s hard not to be disappointed that Scott is apparently being given free reign over the Alien franchise, even as more and more time passes since the last time he made a genuinely impressive movie. Some fresh blood would do the series a whole lot of good, and would avoid a situation similar to what happened with Prometheus, where longtime Alien fans and newcomers alike were left thoroughly underwhelmed.

That said, for all that Scott claims that Neill Blomkamp’s sequel about Ellen Ripley is dead in the water, there’s every chance that the studio will rethink these plans if Covenant fails to light a fire under its audiences when it finally debuts next week.

Or, alternatively, if audiences love Covenant, this might be the start of a new heyday for the franchise, as Scott regains his former directorial glory.